Choc Chip Murder (A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 7) Read online

  Choc Chip Murder

  A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 7

  Rosie A. Point

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  More for you…

  Thank you, Reader!

  Also by Rosie A. Point

  Copyright Rosie A. Point 2019.

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  1

  “That’s hilarious, Tabitha,” a woman said, on the other side of the French doors that led to the Runaway Inn’s terrace, “but you know that I’m the one who’s going to win the Muffin Flower Show this year.”

  “Really, Rose, you can’t make sweeping statements like that,” another lady replied, patting her dainty curls. “It’s rude.”

  “Rude? It’s fact.” Rose, the original speaker, with her silver hair done up in a bun that tugged at the roots of her hair, smirked. “I’ve won the Flower Show every year for the past five years. I don’t see why this one will be any different.”

  I lingered near the doorway, taking a few breaths of vitriol-free air before I headed out again with another tray of choc-chip cookies for the ladies of the Muffin Garden Society. Bee and I had been overjoyed after Mrs. Rickleston, the owner of the Runaway Inn, had asked us to cater the Muffin Garden Society party.

  Now, I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.

  The women, in particular Rose-Marie, had made disparaging comments about each other, the cookies, and the tea and milk they had been served. There was nothing wrong with the tea, milk, and cookies, but I couldn’t speak for the ladies. They were full of gossip, and a couple dollops of mean for good measure.

  “Taking another break?” Bee asked, and halted beside me, holding a plate of cupcakes.

  “It isn’t another break,” I replied, blushing. “I’m just… um—”

  “Avoiding the ire of Rose and her cronies?”

  “Pretty much,” I replied. “They’re exhausting. Every time I put a plate down, they have something else to say.”

  “Just offer them a sweet smile and a passive-aggressive comment and be on your way,” Bee replied.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re handling this really well.” Bee wasn’t a ‘people person.’ “What are you hiding? You didn’t do anything to the cookies, did you?”

  “What? Like poison them?” Bee gave an evil laugh, the gap between her two front teeth on full display. “No, Ruby, of course I didn’t do anything to the cookies. I would never jeopardize our business like that.”

  “Oh good.”

  She swept toward the back door and opened it. “I can’t make any promises about the tea, though,” she sang, over her shoulder.

  “That’s not funny!” I cried, even though she was obviously joking. Bee had been a police officer before she’d become my chief baker and best friend. She wasn’t about to poison anyone, but she certainly had a barbed tongue.

  I took a breath then exited the back door and walked across the terrace. Spring had come in full force, and the grass in the garden below was green, the trees flowering beautifully, and the hedges trimmed into shapes and angles. A gardener wandered around down there, carrying a pair of shears and wearing overalls. He disappeared behind the hedges.

  “You there!” A woman’s voice cut through my appreciation of the new spring day.

  I looked up.

  Rose-Marie—the dragon of the Muffin Garden Society—clicked her fingers at me imperiously. “You there, can you hear me? I think she’s deaf. Come here.”

  I gritted my teeth and walked over. “Hello, ma’am. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Yes, there’s something you can help me with,” she said, in mocking tones. “You can help me by removing this disgusting tea from the table and leaving that tray of cookies. And you can do it with a smile.” Rose glanced around at the other women at the table. “I swear, you can’t get good help these days.”

  A few of the ladies shot me appraising looks. One of them, a woman with silver hair that draped past her shoulders, offered me a smile that might’ve been consoling.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?” Rose-Marie clicked her fingers a second time.

  Maybe Bee’s poisoning joke was funny. I set the tray of cookies down on the table then removed the pitcher of iced tea. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Another award?” Rose-Marie tittered and rose from the table. “Excuse me. I’m going to use the ladies’ room.” She tottered off.

  “I think I will too.” The woman with the long silver hair got up. “I’ll use the time to clear my mind of Rose’s gossip.”

  A few of the other ladies gave scandalized gasps, but their eyes lit up with joy. I backed away from the table and nearly bumped into Bee, who was on her way back, her cheeks flushed. “I had to stop myself from dumping the cupcakes on one of their heads,” she hissed. “Horrible women.”

  “Now, who’s taking unnecessary breaks?”

  “I’d say they’re very necessary. Someone’s liable to get a pie in the face if they keep talking like they are now. I can’t believe we’re going to have a stall at this Flower Show thing. We’ve got to be crazy to subject ourselves to another day of this.”

  The Annual Muffin Flower Show was at the end of the week, and we’d already secured ourselves a stall in the park where it would be held. It was a great business opportunity, and now, a headache Bee and I would have to bear. I hated to think that this would leave a bad impression on the residents of Muffin, Massachusetts.

  I’d already felt what it was like to be stared at and judged by people. I didn’t want that again.

  “It’s going to be OK,” I said. “It’s just one day. It’s not like—”

  The pop-pop of gunfire interrupted me. The pitcher of iced tea slipped from my grasp, dropped to the stone portico tiling and shattered. People screamed and ducked, Bee and I grabbed each other by the arms.

  “What was that?” Someone yelled.

  “Shooting! A gun!”

  Mrs. Rickleston hurried out onto the terrace, pale as a sheet. “What on earth just happened?”

  The elderly ladies had all ducked under their tables or fainted in their chairs. People peeked out from underneath the tablecloths, a few of them still clutching cookies or cupcakes.

  “Quiet,” Bee commanded. “Is everyone all right? Has anyone been hurt?”

  Slowly, the women got back into their seats. They checked themselves or woke their friends. No blood or bullet wounds or deaths so far.

  “It sounded like it came from the garden,” I said. “Down there.” My gaze lifted, and I gulped. A man’s boots peeked out from behind a hedge.

  Bee and I exchanged a glance.

  “Call 911, Mrs. Rickleston.”

  “Everyone stay here,” Bee called out.

  Together, we set off toward the end of the terrace, then proceeded down the stone stairs and onto the garden path. Every step brought us closer to the boots and what was surely behind that hedge. I took a deep breath. We stepped around the corn
er.

  The man was a gardener, the same one I’d noticed earlier on, with a shock of brown hair, tufted by the wind. He had been shot twice in the chest. A woman’s stiletto shoe was wedged in the mud beneath a freshly watered tree two feet from his body.

  “Oh no,” I breathed, and speckles crossed my vision. I still wasn’t good with dead bodies. Not that I ever wanted to be. “Oh no, not again.”

  “Again.” Bee released a weighty sigh. “Mrs. Rickleston,” she called. “There’s no need for an ambulance. Tell them he’s dead.”

  The volley of shocked cries from the ladies on the terrace would have been comical if not for the gardener’s cooling corpse.

  2

  The police had taken witness statements galore and had told people they could go home, but the Garden Society ladies had decided that this was the place to be. They milled around on the terrace, keeping back from the police line that had been placed across the end of it.

  Folks from the coroner’s office had arrived to deal with the body and had erected a screen to block their work from view.

  Bee slipped out of the back door of the inn. “All right, the broken glass is all cleaned up,” she said.

  I’d been too shaken to clean it up myself, and Mrs. Rickleston had been worried one of the ladies would step on the pieces of the pitcher I’d dropped earlier. Thankfully, Bee, the level-headed one between the two of us, had been on it.

  “Thanks, Bee, you’re a lifesaver.”

  “Not literally, though.” She nodded toward the screen. “What do you think?”

  I gestured to the side of the terrace where there were less ladies hovering around, gossiping, and we walked to the spot together.

  Bee craned her neck. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Do you want to?” I asked, pulling a face. “I think we saw enough.”

  “Speaking of which,” Bee put in, “what do you think of what we saw? Two bullet wounds, matching the sounds we heard, and a shoe.”

  “A woman’s shoe.” It had been bright red and a stiletto. “Stuck in the mud.”

  “Perhaps, the killer got stuck and had to shed her shoe to make a hasty escape?”

  “That’s what it seems like.” I licked my lips, glancing around at the others on the terrace. The ladies were all pale or flushed and everyone was gossiping. A few of them were downright excited by what had happened. “I wonder who he was,” I said. “The gardener.”

  “There’s one way we can find out.” Bee nodded toward Mrs. Rickleston, who stood nearby, trying to placate one of the paler Garden Society attendees. Our hostess knew everything about everybody in Muffin. She’d been a great source of information weeks ago when another resident of the town had been murdered.

  “Mrs. Rickleston,” I called, softly.

  The innkeeper wore her hair in curls and had on a neat navy blue dress speckled in polka dots. She shuffled over, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. “Hello, dears, are you all right? What a scare this has been. And in our own back garden. How terrible.”

  “Terrible,” I agreed.

  “Poor Mr. Snow,” she continued. “He was such a nice man. I don’t understand why anyone would have wanted to do this to him.”

  “Mr. Snow?” Bee asked.

  “Brent Snow,” Mrs. Rickleston replied. “He’s one of the approved gardeners for the Gardening Society, though he only works with a select few women. I know he’s been rushed off his feet trying to get everything ready for the Muffin Flower Show. It’s a miracle he managed to come to the inn today to trim the hedges. Oh no, it’s not a miracle. It’s a disaster.” Mrs. Rickleston fumbled a Kleenex out of her pocket and dabbed the end of her nose. “If he hadn’t been here…”

  My suspicions were that whoever had planned on killing Brent would have done it regardless of whether he’d been in the inn’s garden or another.

  “So he had no enemies? None at all?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of, dear.”

  Bee wriggled her nose from side-to-side. “Hmm.”

  “What is it?” Mrs. Rickleston asked.

  “You mentioned he worked with some of the Garden Society members?”

  “Yes, he did.” Mrs. Rickleston’s eyes widened. “Oh, but you don’t think that any of the ladies had something to do with this, do you? Surely not. They’re all so lovely.”

  I snorted and covered it with a cough. Almost all the women we’d spoken to at this event had been nothing but rude and derogatory toward us.

  “We’re not making any assumptions,” Bee said. “Yet.” She couldn’t put aside her investigative nature. “We’re curious about it, though.”

  “Yeah, this tea party is… a memorable event.”

  “Memorable?” Mrs. Rickleston. “I hope the ladies don’t associate the Runaway Inn with this from now on. This is the first time I’ve ever hosted a Garden Society party for them.”

  “I’m sure they’ll get over it.” Bee flapped a hand. “Who was Brent working with?”

  “Let me think for a moment.” Mrs. Rickleston worried her Kleenex until it frayed. “I don’t know much about what Brent was doing, but I do know that he had to tend to Rose-Marie Wilde’s garden before he came here.”

  The last person to see him alive? Or, rather, to talk to him when he’d been alive?

  “Did Brent say anything to you when he arrived this morning?” Bee asked. “Anything at all? Did he mention he was upset or that—?”

  “What on earth is going on here?” Rose-Marie herself had just tottered into view from around the corner. My gaze flickered to her feet, but she wore sensible low-slung heels. Shoot, I had no idea if she’d changed them in the last hour or so. It wasn’t like I’d been paying much attention to her feet while she’d been berating me about cookies and iced tea.

  A second woman came into view, the one who had smiled at me after Rose’s repugnant behavior, and sniffed. “What’s going on?”

  “I was just asking that question, Sarah,” Rose snapped. “There’s no need for you to mimic me constantly. We all know you want to be me, but have some pride, woman.”

  “Ladies, please,” Mrs. Rickleston went to them. “Now isn’t the time for fighting. There’s been a terrible accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” Bee muttered. “It was clearly premeditated. Who brings a gun to a garden tea?”

  I scanned Rose, but she didn’t have anything suspicious on her person. She was a mean woman wearing a pair of dainty white lace gloves. She used them to bring her glasses—that had been hanging on a string of pearls around her neck—up to her face. “What kind of accident?” she asked.

  “Yes, what kind of accident?” Sarah asked.

  “If you don’t stop copying me, I’m going to take off one of my gloves and slap you with it.”

  Mrs. Rickleston clapped her hands several times. “Ladies, I’m afraid the afternoon tea is over.”

  “It’s morning,” Rose growled.

  “The morning tea,” Mrs. Rickleston corrected. “It’s over. A man has lost his life this morning and it’s time for the Runaway Inn to assist the police in whichever way they see fit.”

  Grumbles broke out among the society members, but they fetched their purses, their hats, gloves and scarves. Rose lingered, pursing her lips and shooting dagger-eyes at Mrs. Rickleston, but the inn owner’s mind was made up.

  “Ruby, Beatrice, dear, would you mind helping me clean up all this mess?” she asked.

  “Sure.” It would give us the chance to figure out what had happened and bounce a few theories off each other. So far, there was one particularly nasty person of interest: Rose-Marie Wilde. But being nasty didn’t necessarily equate to being a murderer.

  I couldn’t help being curious about the death of poor Brent and wondering who might’ve done it. And, knowing Bee, it was only a matter of time before we got involved.

  3

  “You know, we probably shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Ruby,” Bee said, looping her arm
through mine. “You really need to stop caring about what people think.”

  “It’s not that…”

  “Oh?”

  But, yes, it was that. I was terrified that the folks in Muffin would hate us for putting a foot wrong. It was probably an irrational fear, but I couldn’t shake it. It was the type of concern I’d had ever since my ex-fiancé had disappeared and all my friends back in New York had started gossiping behind my back. It was so much easier to avoid trouble. Or to move on to another town. That was the whole concept of the food truck’s business model.

  I had a supplier who shipped me what I needed when I ordered it. We stayed for a few months at a discount rate at an inn or guesthouse, as long as we provided a few treats free of charge, and we wound up meeting new people, learning new things, having fun, and making a bit of money.

  Getting involved with murder cases wasn’t supposed to factor into that.

  And to make matters worse, I simultaneously wanted to stick my head in the sand and play nice, as well as investigate because I was too curious for my own good.

  “Trust me, Rubes,” Bee said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get ahead.”

  “Get ahead? We’re not getting ahead. We’re getting involved.”

  “You’re not going to go into crisis mode about this type of thing every time we talk to someone, are you?” Bee asked. “Because that’s all we’re going to do.” She gestured to the sprawling clapboard home in front of us with its flowering garden. “Talk to Rose-Marie.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “You’re right. I’m being too paranoid about this.”